Twitter ‘Ads’ Link Out To Third Party Apps

Last week, Twitter caused a bit of a buzz when it added tiny ads to users’ profile pages, pointing to pages within the startup’s domain. This week, the ads have been replaced with ads for third party Twitter apps Tweetie, ExecTweets and Twittervision. According to TechCrunch, the ads being served are still not paid ads per se (John Battelle’s Federated Media, the company behind ExecTweets, is sharing a portion of its revenue with the Big T).  Which begs the question, “Is this really the beginning of a revenue model for Twitter?”

Things are falling into place for a Twitterized ad platform to take shape in the near future.  It’s going to lean heavily on the ground being layed by Wefollow.com (the self-submission Twitter directory from Digg founder Kevin Rose - an application that I wouldn’t be shocked to see Twitter buy and integrate, just like Summize/Twitter Search before it, before the end of 2009.  Quick, opt-in, voluntary tagging that tells the platform what ads to show you.

Do you think that ads are the future of Twitter?  Or is data mining/market research where its real power lies?  Tell me what you think!